The Colored Theatre in Los Angeles

Abstract

LOS ANGELES, September I99o-June I99I-The Colored Museum is the play that first won George C. Wolfe fame not only in New York but in Los Angeles in 1988. In the I990/91 season Wolfe, in his premiere ofJelly's LastJam at L.A.'s Mark Taper Forum, portrayed a man spending his life de-coloring himself: Jazz musician Jelly Roll Morton who historically denied his blackness. Nevertheless, this was the most talked about black show in town, with only two nonblacks playing minor roles in the 24-member cast. It broke the Taper's box office record with $758,826 in its limited eight-week run from 24 February to 2I April 1991 and is reportedly being reworked for Broadway. During the current debate about multiculturalism, Los Angeles-the city that has elected a black mayor for several terms-claims to be the home to more peoples and languages than virtually any place else in the world (Breslauer 1991:6). L.A. is even more diversified than New York, with two-thirds of its population people of color-and L.A.'s theatre reflects this great variety. At three large multispaced institutional theatres-the Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles Theatre Center (closed in October I99I due to financial problems), and Odyssey Theatre-this past season was highlighted by productions involving non-Euro-American cultures. Unlike the nontraditional casting TDR has been reporting on where the color-blind casting is primarily a directorial strategy-casting actors in originally written for whites-most of the colored plays we saw are from the outset. What's more interesting is that among numerous plays, there are three different approaches to multiculturalism. One is primarily color-blind, aiming at the universality of the themes and characters. Another deals with racial issues using mainly characters of the same color. The third uses multiracial casts to present interracial/intercultural themes. A conspicuous example in the color-blind category was an allCaucasian rendition of The Good Woman of (The Actors' Gang, directed by Tim Robbins, at Odyssey Theatre, 14 September-2 December I990). Although an all-Caucasian cast is not unusual for this play which Brecht did not really set in China's Sichuan province but in a nonexistent City of Setzuan it might not be an easy choice to make in a place where there is the largest number of Asian American performers, especially during the heated controversy over the casting of a Caucasian actor for Miss Saigon. The production featured painted faces, coinciding with traditional Chinese stage makeup. The opening scene, in which various characters moved through a semiconstructivist set suggesting an